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Canadian Writers Removed from an Education Sector Seminar

Press Release

The effort to use Canadian writing for free is clearly not fair

For immediate release

Toronto, December 7, 2012 – The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) is asking for a forthright conversation with Canada’s teachers, professors and students about the use of writers’ work in Canadian classrooms.

Many school, college and university administrations have recently signaled they will soon stop paying copyright licence royalties owed Canadian writers. We believe this development is part of an effort within educational administrations to cut costs by using the work of Canadian writers for free instead of paying a reasonable copyright licence.

This aggressively expanded interpretation of Copyright’s fair dealing provision has been the focus of sustained lobbying by educational representatives for over a decade. Some Canadian community colleges and universities have created resource policies aimed directly at the elimination of copyright licensing. We believe this effort was not requested by teachers, and is not to the benefit of students; rather, the aim appears to be radical cost cutting by administrators and boards. We believe this will result in the greatly reduced availability of quality Canadian writing in our schools.

When the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC) recently held a series of seminars about this policy shift, TWUC members and staff tried to voice our concerns to those assembled. Instead of the conversation with teachers and students we’d hoped for, TWUC members were met by an impenetrable and evasive college administration. Canadian writers were removed from an educational seminar, and denied the privilege of speaking or distributing information.

The Writers’ Union of Canada is our country’s national organization representing more than 2,000 professional authors of books. Founded in 1973, the Union is dedicated to fostering writing in Canada, and promoting the rights, freedoms, and economic well-being of all writers. www.writersunion.ca

Member Review

Nancy Bell is happy to announce her new association with Books We Love Ltd out of Chestermere, Alberta. Her novel, Laurel's Miracle, previously published by MuseItUp Publishing, will be re-released as Laurel's Quest in the fall of 2014. The text has been updated and there is a wondeful new cover. ...

We acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,681 individual artists and 1,125 organizations in 216 communities across Ontario for a total of $52.8 million.

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